The ultimate souvenir fabric

Followers on Instagram will have seen that I created some fabric from a photograph of a rock I took on our recent holiday to Broome [later add: I was inspired by the magnificent fabric that Meggipeg created from one of her mother’s paintings]. Because of the colours, I found that I am well camouflaged against the rocks in Coalseam Conservation Park where we visited a couple of weeks ago to look at the wildflowers.

This is the photograph I used. It is a rock at Gantheaume Point in Broome, most famous for having dinosaur prints in the rocks. This isn’t one of those famous rocks, but I was taken with the colours; I love the pink and the ochre and would never have thought of combining the two.

I did some cropping and then used the mirror feature to create the fabric, which I had printed at Spoonflower.

I ordered a yard (why only a yard?) of the organic cotton knit ultra, which luckily had a bit of stretch as I had no idea what to do with this. Unfortunately, the logical way to use the pattern was the opposite way to the stretch, which caused me a bit of head scratching. I have to admit that I had no idea how this fabric would turn out and was quite surprised at how defined the pattern was. You can see that there is a strong pattern to the right hand side and a slightly less strong pattern to the left of it. This left me with a bit of a conundrum. I needed to feature those two patterns and they were close together. I thought about a skirt, but it didn’t work, and then I went to my old standby the Deer & Doe Plantain. I redrew the pattern so that I could lay the whole front and back on the single layer of fabric, lining up the pattern and top and tailing the front and back so that I could fit them on.

I had just enough at the top of each piece to get a short sleeve out, centreing the pattern. Of course, I should have sized up as the stretch is less than I would normally use for this pattern, but hey ho, it worked – sort of!

I’ve got to say that I’ve learned a lot from this little exercise, and will do it again, with a great deal more editing before I get the fabric printed. I will also have a much better idea about what I want to make from the fabric before I order it, but I’m not regretting getting this piece printed (and another, different, piece, yet to be made) as I really like this top.

Every time I look at it I get lost in the pattern. I’m not sure if it was our recent attendance at Aladdin the musical (compliments of Tom and Bridgette), but I can see genies, and all sorts of wizard like characters in this fabric. Some of the faces do weird me out a little…

Please excuse the hair in these photos – I had a swim and then parked a hat on my wet hair, which is not ideal!

The back has a very strong pattern.

I think this is a lovely way to get souvenir fabric. It is unique to me and is a really nice source of conversation. We were in the Geraldton Art Gallery (fascinating video on Morse Code showing there) and someone admired it. I’m sure they regretted commenting as I launched into a description of where it came from!

After a few wears, I have decided that the front neckline is too high so I’ve unpicked the whole thing and lowered it.

This turned out really beautifully. It is difficult to see the original photo with the mirroring, but the patterns and colours are gorgeous. I look forward to seeing what else you are going to make with your prints.